The Reading Room is an invigilated space for the use of Archives and Manuscripts and printed Special Collections.
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Cory Collection
The collection comprises around 60 volumes from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. The majority are works of English prose, poetry and drama, by writers such as Joseph Addison, Richard Glover and Samuel Richardson.
The Collection
Subject: English literature
The collection also covers works of theology, moral guidance, logic, natural history, juvenile literature, and translations from classical authors. In addition to texts in English, the collection contains a few works in French and Italian. Most volumes are in contemporary bindings and several are illustrated. Of particular note is a volume of five rare eighteenth-century plays by Ambrose Philips, John Banks, Aaron Hill, Richard Steele and George Farquhar.
The collection is based on a selection of the books of Yvonne Cory, é Hales (1928-2008). Cory began collecting books while studying English at Somerville College, Oxford. She worked in publishing before marriage, and subsequently developed her collection with a view to recreating a library of the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ in the family home in the Cathedral Close in Salisbury. Cory’s daughter Dr Emma Jane Robinson (Ｇ of London Librarian 1994-2003) inherited much of the older material and added items from her own collection and those from other members of the family. Robinson donated the books to the Ｇ of London in 2013.
Items from the collection
Isaac Barrow, A Brief Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer and the Decalogue (1681)
Florence Warden, A Terrible Family ([1893])
Access
For an overview of the collection, do a on [Cory] or an on “Cory, Yvonne, 1928-2008” or “Robinson, Emma Jane, 1953-” as former owners.. The collection is held off-site and material requires 48 hours (excluding weekends) to be fetched.
